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Massie v. State5/26/1998
opinion because there was a lack of proof that the experience of the witness in the undertaking business had "involved any observations of the effects of water, under various conditions, upon the bodies of drowned persons, as indicating the approximate time of death." Id. at 93, 143 A. at 653.
The statutes governing post-mortem examiners indicate that lay persons, acting as investigators for and under the supervision of deputy medical examiners, may make reports which, as part of the deputy medical examiner's records, are admissible in evidence. Maryland Code (1982, 1994 Repl. Vol.), 5-301 through 5-312 of the Health-General Article (HG). Each deputy medical examiner for a county must be a physician. HG 5-306(c). Police and sheriffs are required by HG 5-309(b) to notify the medical examiner and the State's Attorney of certain deaths, including those by violence, and to give those officials "the known facts concerning the time, place, manner, and circumstances of the death." The investigation that follows up on this notice need not be by the medical examiner personally. "Immediately on notification that a medical examiner's case has occurred, the medical examiner or an investigator of the medical examiner shall go to and take charge of the body. The medical examiner or the investigator shall investigate fully the essential facts concerning the medical cause of death and, before leaving the premises, reduce these facts and the names and addresses of witnesses to writing, which shall be filed in the medical examiner's office."
HG 5-309(c). This section was amended to its present text by Chapter 839 of the Acts of 1982, the title of which in relevant part states that it was enacted " or the purpose of providing that an investigator of a medical examiner may conduct an investigation in a medical examiner's case ...."
Each deputy medical examiner must keep complete records on each of that official's medical examiner's cases. HG 5-311(a)(1). These records are to include " he date, cause, and manner of death" and " ll other available information about the death." HG 5-311(a)(2)(iii) and (iv). The use of these records as evidence of their contents is addressed in HG 5-311(d) wherein the term, "record," is specially defined to exclude "a statement of a witness or other individual." HG 5-311(d)(1)(ii). HG 5-311(d)(2) then provides: "A record of the office of ... any deputy medical examiner, if made by the medical examiner or by anyone under the medical examiner's direct supervision or control, ... is competent evidence in any court in this State of the matters and facts contained in it."
Under these statutes it would seem that the observations and conclusions of a non-physician investigator concerning the date, manner, and cause of death, and possibly even the time of death, can be incorporated into the official record and, in that form, be admitted into evidence. Thus there is no legislative policy limiting opinions on these matters to those expressed by a physician.
The relevant cases from other jurisdictions to which we have been referred or that our research has disclosed are relatively few. Tope v. State, 477 N.E.2d 873 (Ind. 1985), alternatively holds that a lay coroner, the local undertaker, could not qualify as an expert witness on the time of death. Id. at 876. Tope was a post-conviction case. The coroner had not testified at the petitioner's original trial on murder charges. It was claimed the coroner's opinion, placing the death within a certain four-hour range, was newly discovered evidence. The court, however, concluded that, even if that were so, the coroner's testimony would have been limited to body warmth and loss of blood and that those contradictio
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